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  • 标题:The last archaeologist? Material culture and contested identities.
  • 作者:Smith, Laurajane
  • 期刊名称:Australian Aboriginal Studies
  • 印刷版ISSN:0729-4352
  • 出版年度:1999
  • 期号:September
  • 语种:English
  • 出版社:Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  • 摘要:Ironically, archaeologists have themselves used privileged access to material culture to define their own disciplinary identity. Historically, in Australia and elsewhere, they have assumed a pastoral role as stewards of the material remains of the past, which more recently has been buttressed by claims to scientific rigour. This has been very important in distinguishing archaeological research from grave robbing or quaint antiquarianism. Some of the results of this have been that the archaeological discipline constructs its own sense of cultural identity around a privileged access to material culture. For example, control over significant sites or high status items of material culture are seen as part and parcel of high status within the discipline.
  • 关键词:Archaeology;Culture;Indigenous peoples;Material culture;Social history

The last archaeologist? Material culture and contested identities.


Smith, Laurajane


Material culture provides what Buchli (1995) calls `brutally physical' resources, linked to history and the past, which can be drawn on in an active process of re/creating cultural identities. Consequently, the use of material culture as the data of archaeological research has led to the questioning of archaeologists and their research practices by groups such as local historical societies, rural organisations and other community groups, feminists and tourism interests. In particular, indigenous peoples have contested what was once an archaeological monopoly of access to their material heritage. This is also a challenge to archaeological interpretations of the past which have been, in Australia at least, used to govern aspects of Aboriginal cultural identity. Archaeological interpretations of the past are often, through archaeological claims to `scientific' expertise, used to legitimise or delegitimise Aboriginal claims about cultural identity.

Ironically, archaeologists have themselves used privileged access to material culture to define their own disciplinary identity. Historically, in Australia and elsewhere, they have assumed a pastoral role as stewards of the material remains of the past, which more recently has been buttressed by claims to scientific rigour. This has been very important in distinguishing archaeological research from grave robbing or quaint antiquarianism. Some of the results of this have been that the archaeological discipline constructs its own sense of cultural identity around a privileged access to material culture. For example, control over significant sites or high status items of material culture are seen as part and parcel of high status within the discipline.

In 1995 a very public conflict erupted between the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council (TALC) and archaeologists from Melbourne's La Trobe University over the possession of excavated artefacts. This article uses the conflict to investigate the way in which archaeologists have used material culture as a commodity which may be used to confer power, and how the possession and control of material culture, on the one hand, and `authority' to `interpret' it, on the other, has come to underpin the authority of archaeological knowledge about the past and its governance of cultural identity. Further, the article explores the extent to which the commodification of material culture as a resource of power has, itself, allowed a significant challenge not only to the authority of archaeological knowledge in the governance of Aboriginal cultural identity, but also to the basic understanding of what it means to `be' an archaeologist in the 1990s.

Archaeological stewardship and the governance of identity

In Australia, as in many other countries, archaeologists have established for themselves a position of authority and power over the disposition and interpretation of material culture, particularly indigenous material culture (Byrne 1993; Sullivan 1993, 1996). This is because they have placed themselves at the centre of the processes of conservation and management of past material culture, variously referred to as cultural heritage management (CHM) or cultural resource management--although it must be noted that it has done so among other forms of expertise, all of which may and do get subsumed within bureaucratic expediency. In each Australian state, legislation and policies exist, often drafted by or with the assistance of archaeologists, that detail and control management processes. Not only are archaeologists commonly employed in heritage bureaucracies to administer this legislation and policy, but also, as consultants, they are often the principal decision makers as to the value and meaning of material culture and how, or if, it should be preserved and managed.

Historically, archaeologists were able to establish their position within CHM through explicit claims to scientific expertise, authority and stewardship over material culture. These claims became particularly relevant in the late 1960s and 1970s, when public concern over the destruction of cultural heritage had become a notable issue (Flood 1989; Mulvaney 1989, 1990). Also at this time, Aboriginal activism had become increasingly assertive and was effectively using claims to past material culture and identity to reinforce demands for land rights (Miller 1986). By the late 1960s and early 1970s, a significant social problem existed over the management and use of Aboriginal material culture, and archaeologists were one of the groups of experts that state governments turned to for a solution to this problem.

Archaeologists had been lobbying governments for legislation to protect what at the time was referred to as `relics'. As part of this lobbying, they were asserting for themselves a newly aggressive identity as `objective' `scientists', underlined by theoretical innovations from the United States termed the `new' or processual archaeology. Processual theory successfully advocated that the discipline drop its long association with history and epistemologically remodel itself on the natural sciences. Logical positivism was forcefully advocated as the correct philosophical stance for archaeologists to strike, and archaeologists became primarily concerned, at least rhetorically, with the testing of hypotheses through increasingly rigorous and systematic methodologies. The professed aim of the `new' archaeology was to develop universal laws or to identify the general `processes' of human behaviour and cultural development (see Binford 1962, 1988; Schiffer 1988; Watson et al 1971; and Trigger 1989 who comments on this). Archaeological science claimed stewardship over the past, particularly indigenous pasts, through its ability to universalise that past and make it `relevant' to all `mankind' (e.g. Binford 1962; Flannery 1967; Schiffer 1979).

Two caveats need to be made about this observation. Firstly, the `culture history' approach, and the influence of Cambridge archaeology, was not abandoned just because the `New Archaeology' took on a high status, at least at the level of rhetoric. Secondly, it should be realised that there is often a disjuncture between theory and practice in any discipline. The taking up of a particular discursive theme often has as much to do with persuasion and borrowing perceived authority invoked by the new theoretical vocabulary as it does with actually intending to change existing practices.

Nevertheless, the processual theoretical vocabulary was what found its way into the policy process and was made to do useful work there for policy makers, at least at the level of appearances. It should also not be underestimated how warmly many prominent archaeologists of the time embraced the processual turn and its vigorous scientism. For instance, Megaw (1966), Jones (1968), Mulvaney (1971a, 1971b) and Golson (cited in Mulvaney 1971a:373) all stressed the need to incorporate processual theory into Australian archaeology to make it more relevant and professional. Megaw (1966) and Mulvaney (quoted in Megaw 1966:301) both recommended its adoption as a way to avoid parochialism.

Legislation was enacted in most states, including Tasmania, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This legislation was either drafted by archaeologists or was written in close consultation with them (Smith 1996). The new values and methodologies espoused by processual theory were incorporated into the various Acts, under many of which Aboriginal material culture was defined as `relics'--that is, as representing a dead past -- and archaeologists could play a central role in giving meaning to it.

In this process, archaeological knowledge played a part in the governance of aspects of Aboriginal cultural identity. The literature on governmentality, drawing on Foucault's (1991) later work, is useful for theorising this process. The literature argues that intellectual knowledge is incorporated into the act of governing populations and social problems by `rendering the world thinkable, taming its intractable reality by subjecting it to the disciplined analyses of thought' (Rose and Miller 1992:182; see also Rose 1991, 1993). Importantly, this process is based on liberal modernity which stresses rational universal `truths' (Pavlich 1995). Thus, archaeological rationality, emphasised by the logical positivism of processualism, became useful in defining populations (be they indigenous peoples or other groups) through both their `archaeological' past and the material culture (or heritage objects) which were defined as representing their past. Further, the application of `rational' knowledge explicitly renders the social problems it governs as non-`political' and thus more tractable.

Archaeological knowledge and values became inextricably tied into the CHM process and, through CHM, archaeology became, in Rose and Miller's (1992:175) terms, a `technology of government'. That is, a body of knowledge and expertise which government and bureaucracies mobilise to get things done (Dean 1994). Archaeological expertise determined the value and meaning of Aboriginal cultural heritage, and archaeological knowledge thus helped to govern the legitimacy of Aboriginal claims made on the basis of links to the past and cultural identity, while also depoliticising these claims by redefining them as technical issues of management (Smith and Campbell 1998).

This process has been strongly challenged by Aboriginal people and communities who have questioned the appropriateness of archaeological authority over their heritage and who have demanded that consultation with communities occur as part of both the management and research process (e.g. see Ah Kit 1995; Fourmile 1989a, 1989b, 1992; Langford 1983; Organ 1994). In response, heritage agencies and the Australian Archaeological Association have respectively enacted policies and a code of ethics that make consultation mandatory. Despite this, Aboriginal criticism has pointed out that consultation often consists of simply `telling' Aboriginal communities about research and management projects and tends to lack any element of negotiation (TALC 1996; see also Smith 1996 for discussion of this issue). Further, the adherence to processual theory tends to contradict consultative policies and codes of ethics (Smith 1995; Thorley 1996). This is because the theory can only, given the intellectual boundaries it sets for itself, incorporate knowledge and values constructed within strict logical positive frameworks. This means that Aboriginal knowledge, values and concerns often make little practical sense within either a research or a management process defined by processual `science'. As a consequence, policies of consultation have not alleviated all Aboriginal concerns about archaeological access and possession of their material culture.

In underpinning Aboriginal heritage legislation and the governmental role of archaeological knowledge, processual theory defines the intellectual and practical boundaries of any debate or conflict. Most importantly for archaeology, processual values have ensured that both management and research archaeology have, as the discipline terms it, a `relevance'. Although this relevance is never really defined, it has been a pervasive discourse within the discipline (e.g. Ford 1973; Fritz 1973; King 1977). In a sense, archaeology is a rather intellectually insecure discipline. It can seldom really replicate its experiments or research processes, as excavation is a method that both reveals information while in effect destroying significant aspects of the data base. Further, the discipline deals with the intangibilities of `the past', which makes the desired linkage between archaeology and the natural sciences problematic. However, the physicality of material culture renders archaeological knowledge tangible, `evidential' and thus `real'. The idea that processual theory gives archaeology relevance is revealing in so far as processual theory gives archaeology authority, an authority that underpins and is reinforced by its role in the governance of material culture and the meanings assigned to it. Its privileged position over the management of material culture assures access to the data base, and access to those `things' that symbolise the discipline's `relevance', authority and, ultimately, its identity as an objective science.

It is, however, at this point that understanding archaeology as a technology of government fails to make sense of the subsequent challenging of archaeological authority by Aboriginal people. As various commentators have noted (Curtis 1995; O'Malley 1996; Smith and Campbell 1998), the governmentality literature tends to over-privilege the authority of knowledge, to overly abstract resources of power, and has yet to deal with the consequences of contestation of expert knowledge. In Tasmania, Aboriginal organisations were able to subvert archaeological authority by repossessing their material culture--what had previously been a tangible resource of power for others now became a strategic resource for Aboriginal people.

The Last Tasmanian: an exercise in the governance of Aboriginal identity

The governmental role that archaeological knowledge has played over Aboriginal identity is well illustrated by the incorporation of archaeological research into the 1978 film The Last Tasmanian. Understanding the history and effect of this film is also important for understanding the nature, significance and ironies of the subsequent TALC/La Trobe affair.

The Last Tasmanian, made by Tom Haydon, was based on research by Rhys Jones (ARTIS 1978; Haydon 1978; Jones 1992) and had significant consequences for public and policy perceptions of Tasmanian Aboriginal identity. The film tells the story of Tasmanian `prehistory' and European contact and occupation, and it met with extensive and varied critical attention. One review reported that audiences were `stunned and horrified' by the revelation of what the film terms `the most complete case of genocide of a whole race in recorded history' (quoted in Daniels and Murnane 1978). It won a prestigious Logie award in 1979 for the best documentary (Jones 1992), critical acclaim in the UK (Raven 1978) and in the Australian media (ARTIS 1978).

As well as revealing the horrendous contact history of Tasmania, the film incorporated Jones' theory that the Tasmanian pre-contact past represented a `paradox' for human cultural development. Jones argued that Aboriginal material culture represented degeneration and maladaptation rather than technological progression or stasis (1971a, 1971b, 1977a, 1977b, 1978a). This was due, he argued, to the maladaptive effects of cultural isolation caused by the separation of Tasmania from the mainland by rising post-glacial sea-levels (Jones 1978a:21). The film inadvertently supported popular public perceptions that the Tasmanians were a `dying race' and doomed to die out despite European occupation (Bickford 1979; Sykes 1979). It also redefined contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginal people as `Aboriginal descendants' or `Straitsmen' and argued that Truganini, who died in 1876, was in fact `the last Tasmanian' (see also ABC 1979; Haydon 1979; Jones 1978b).

The release of the film corresponded with an increase in the Aboriginal political public profile in Tasmania--archaeological science in the form of a popular documentary jeopardised, however much they did not intend to, Aboriginal political recognition and legitimacy. The film became a powerful medium through which archaeological knowledge was mobilised in a public arena, and gave support and credibility to public and policy perceptions that Tasmanian Aborigines did not exist. This point nicely demonstrates Pixley's (1993) observation that `progressive' discourses or interventions, once in the public or policy arena, can take directions, and have consequences, far removed from the original intentions of their originators.

The film was vigorously defended by Haydon and Jones from criticism by Aboriginal people and from some archaeologists. For Jones, the film told the story of the Tasmanian archaeological record and provided a warning tale about the effects of `closed systems' and the overuse of `energy and other resources':
 It is possible that one of the options open to us for our own survival will
 be to devise steady state systems both economically and in terms of use of
 resources. We must learn as much as we can of the operation of such systems
 in the past and how to avoid their terrible limitations. Will the closed
 world of the Tasmanians become an allegory on a small scale of the fate of
 man, bounded also by the limits of his own globe? (Jones 1978b:21)


This assertion of the significance of the film and its archaeological story is underlain by the processual rhetoric of `relevance'--Aboriginal Tasmanian culture history is made universally relevant and tractable via the auspices of science, and consequently more readily governed. As Lehman (1991:10) reports, the film also gave popular support to the denial of land rights and implied that Aboriginal culture was an `invention of the present ... In this way, the invaders have not only stolen our land, but also seek to claim Aboriginal heritage as theirs: a scientific resource which becomes the property of the researcher.'

In this process, archaeological knowledge not only gave scientific authority and evidence to popular white assumptions about the identity of present-day Tasmanian Aboriginal people, it also reinforced archaeological claims and access to material culture. This occurred through claims to archaeological scientific objectivity and the assumed inherent international scientific values of the archaeological data. Archaeological knowledge was both allowing itself to be used by policy makers and government and simultaneously constituting itself as the authority responsible for the stewardship of a material culture. This was done by defining that material culture as no longer existing within an ongoing cultural context.

The last archaeologist?

The enactment of the Aboriginal Relics Act 1975 (Tas) established the authority of archaeology in Tasmanian CHM. This Act was written in consultation with archaeologists and, by defining `relics' (and thus Aboriginal material culture) as only existing prior to 1876, reinforced the idea of archaeological experts speaking for a `dead past' (Smith 1996). The Last Tasmanian reinforced the usefulness of archaeology in governing public perceptions of Aboriginal identity, and thus the role of archaeology as a technology of government in Tasmania was established by the late 1970s. However, Aboriginal activists and community groups continued to question the authority and role of archaeology in interpreting their past. This continual challenging finally led to a significant alteration in Tasmanian CHM processes.

While The Last Tasmanian cemented the scientific authority of archaeological knowledge, it also, paradoxically, began to undermine that authority as well. It stimulated strong Aboriginal response and reassertions of their identity--in effect, archaeological knowledge, while supporting governmental policies, failed to depoliticise the issue of Aboriginality. The film helped to focus Aboriginal interventions on public perceptions of their non-existence, and Aboriginal people continued to lobby government for control over their heritage.

In response to continuing Aboriginal activism, a certain `goal creep' (McGowan 1995) occurred with respect to Aboriginal heritage policies. By the mid-1990s, changes in CHM Aboriginal consultation policies by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service (responsible for cultural heritage) had resulted in a situation whereby policy extended the boundaries of practice set by legislative requirements (McGowan 1992, 1995). In effect, Aboriginal consultation and issues became a central focus in the Tasmanian government's CHM policies. This ultimately contributed to a significant conflict over the possession of artefacts, in which the resources-of power in CHM were redeployed and renegotiated.

Both the minister and the acting director of the PWS were later to publicly state during the TALC/La Trobe affair that archaeological values need not prevail in this matter (Cleary 1995; Pearce in Maslen 1995b:53). The minister, at least, saw the privileging of consultation issues in the management processes as part of Aboriginal `empowerment': `There is a movement towards enfranchising Aboriginal communities with respect to their heritage and which requires consultation with the Aboriginal community by archaeologists' (Cleary 1995).

The position of archaeology as a technology of government in Tasmania had started to shift during the early 1990s. By the end of 1995 the authority of archaeological knowledge has been significantly challenged.

In 1995, Allen and Murray, leading and supervising academics of La Trobe University's long-term Southern Forest Archaeological Project (SFAP) announced that this research had been jeopardised, if not ended (e.g. Maslen 1995a). They went further to suggest that archaeology in Australia as a whole was under threat due to the actions of PWS cultural heritage managers, the Tasmanian Minister for Environment and Land Management, and the TALC over an application to extend research permits (see Hawes 1995a; Maslen 1995a, 1995b; Morell 1995; Murray 1995; Murray and Allen 1995).

Permits to excavate, analyse and remove material interstate from four sites as part of the SFAP expired in 1991 and 1992 (Allen 1995a; Olney 1995). Applications to extend these permits were denied by the minister (Allen 1995a; Auty 1995). Following PWS policy, the TALC was asked to comment on the application for renewal and, according to documents quoted in Allen's (1995a) summary of events, advised that the permits should not be extended, ostensibly because they had had long enough to analyse the material and the permits had expired some time previously (see also Hawes 1995b). A number of Aboriginal commentators were highly critical of archaeologists' attitudes to consultation, which they characterised as an attempt at obtaining `a rubber stamp' (TALC 1996; Mansell 1995; West quoted in Maslen 1995b:54). The TALC may have also seen this as an opportunity to test the policy changes of the PWS (Darby 1995a).

Responding to a perception that the material would not be returned, the TALC then took legal action to have the material removed to Tasmania. The minister intervened and the material was returned (Auty 1995; Dubdale 1995). The removal of the artefacts from La Trobe was described in the media with polemic about the `death of archaeology' and the `threat' this event posed to `archaeological science'. Allen (1995b) characterised the return of the material as `the greatest act of scientific and cultural vandalism yet seen in this country'. The then Australian Archaeological Association president, cited in the Weekend Australian, is reported to have stated that the disposal of the artefacts before they had been fully analysed would `result in the effective vandalism of these highly significant sites and destruction of extremely important and valuable archaeological information' and described the removal of the artefacts as a `serious' one for science (Ross quoted in Hawes 1995a). These, and similar statements, have a tradition in archaeology and tend to be employed when access to data is threatened, the best example being Mulvaney's reported likening of the return of human remains to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community in 1984 to Nazi book burning (cited in Duncan 1984a; see, for instance, Mulvaney 1981, 1991; Duncan 1984b).

These responses are clearly underlain by processual theoretical assumptions about the nature of `science'. Not only is the `interference' of non-scientists (bureaucrats and Aboriginal people) seen as a threat and an act of `vandalism' against science, but one of the arguments against the return of the material (and one widely circulated in the media) was also that the material belongs to all `mankind', for instance:
 These sites, three of which were first occupied more than 30,000 years ago,
 represent part of the universal history of humans and should be a source of
 history and pride to all Australians, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike.
 The human and non-human archaeological samples taken from them have been
 transformed by years of scientific study into unique documents which
 illuminate our common human history. Their wanton destruction for political
 or neo-spiritual objectives will destroy knowledge...As such, it is an
 extreme form of censorship. (Allen 1995b; see also Allen quoted in Maslen
 1995a:31; Murray quoted in Braund 1995; see also Akerman 1995; Darby 1995b;
 Ferguson 1995; Gregory 1995; Hawes 1995a, 1995b; Launceston Examiner 1995a,
 1995b)


While Australian archaeologists have, in recent years, willingly returned skeletal material and religious artefacts to Aboriginal communities, this was the first time that issues of ownership had been played out with respect to secular cultural material. As the journalist Darby (1995a:11) states, `there has never been such a contest over material that is neither human nor sacred but simply cultural'. Allen and Murray both argued that the material was `garbage' -- the remains of day-to-day activities and was not sacred, and they continually emphasised in the media that no human remains occurred among the material (ABC 1995; Akerman 1995; Allen 1995b; Darby 1995a; Maslen 1995a, 1995b; Murray and Allen 1995). The implication is that this material is only significant to science, a position opposed by the TALC (1996) who argued that the proclamations about the scientific significance and universal importance of the material worked only to deny their cultural custodianship and any values they hold for the material. The threat to archaeological stewardship posed by Aboriginal demands to control the material was emphasised in this case because it was secular material that was being claimed--in effect, the basic data of archaeology.

The discipline's public reaction to the TALC/La Trobe conflict has been mixed--some supportive of Murray and Allen (e.g. Gait 1995; Wright 1995), others critical (e.g. Hope 1995). Concern has been raised over `what would happen to Australian archaeology' after this affair and close attention has been given to the assertion that Australian archaeologists were deserting research in Aboriginal archaeology and going overseas or turning to historical archaeology (e.g. Cosgrove in ABC 1995; Feary and Smith 1995; Maslen 1995a; Murray 1995; Wright 1995).

These perceptions, and the degree of attention they have received, reveal a significant undercurrent of unease in Australian archaeology over events in Tasmania. This is not simply because of specific contingencies in the situation, but also because the affair signals a wider change in relationships between Aboriginal people, archaeologists, politicians, courts and bureaucracies. The authority of archaeological science was jeopardised by the forced return of artefacts to Tasmania. By challenging this authority, the underpinnings of disciplinary identity were also jeopardised. Many archaeologists believe in rigorous science, and its inherent intellectual authority, and expect to have `rights' over material culture often denied to others. Challenge that authority by removing access to data, and what it `means' to `be' an archaeologist becomes open to critical scrutiny.

This shift in power could not be prevented by arguments about the significance of the material to science; in a sense, Murray and Allen were constrained in the arguments they could make. Similar arguments (e.g. Chippindale 1985; Cribb 1990; Derriman 1990; Mulvaney 1991; Stannard 1988) had previously failed to stop the reburial of the Kow Swamp remains, the return of the Murray Black collection and the return of Mungo woman--but they were still invoked in this affair. This is because the parameters for any debate on heritage issues were set by the earlier embedding of processual philosophy within heritage legislation, archaeological regulatory practices, and archaeological perceptions about the nature and aims of CHM. Thus, in a certain sense, it is expected by bureaucracies and governments that archaeologists will respond in certain ways, and it is reasonable that archaeologists will respond to these expectations. The institutionalisation of archaeology as a technology of government, and sustaining the discipline's role in this process, requires that archaeologists invoke the authority of a positivist science previously privileged in the legislation--which is precisely what Murray and Allen attempted to do. If they had not invoked this discourse, their arguments would have had little legitimacy, given the intellectual confines set for archaeology by its position as a technology of government and by the disciplinary identity this role conferred and reinforced. In effect, the theoretical development, discourses and concepts employed within the discipline generally have themselves become `governed' and constrained by the need to maintain positivistic notions of science that had come to underpin archaeological identity, authority and access to the data base.

In this case, however, archaeological claims to expertise were subverted and made irrelevant by the TALC's repossession of their artefacts, a repossession made possible, ironically enough, through a technicality of the very heritage laws that had originally privileged archaeological values and knowledge. The dispossession of the archaeologists meant a loss of a significant commodity of power, their data and the material representation of archaeological authority, expertise and ultimately disciplinary identity.

Conclusion: material culture as a commodity of power

The authority of archaeological knowledge in the CHM process had been given tangibility--made brutally physical--by archaeological control and possession of material culture. Embedded in the possession and control through management of material culture were the processual values and perspectives of archaeological positivistic science. The processual conceptualisation of the nature of archaeological knowledge and research practices have become symbolised in the archaeological possession of material culture, a process reinforced daily through the practices of CHM. In short, material culture had been commodified as a resource of power--a rather ironical situation for archaeologists who have often condemned the economic commodification of material culture by tourist groups (Fowler 1987) and what Hewison (1987) defines as the `heritage industry'.

The commodification of material culture as a resource of power helped to physically reinforce archaeological claims to authority in CHM and in interpreting the past. This in turn reinforced processual discourse and concepts within the discipline. Processual theory has become almost the `default' intellectual position within Australian archaeology due to, firstly, the authority it provided in controlling access to material culture, and, secondly, the extent to which it had become institutionalised within CHM.

Ironically, it was the commodification of material culture as a resource of power that ultimately allowed the Tasmanian Aboriginal community to challenge archaeological authority and subvert it by reclaiming possession of that material culture. The way in which material culture had been conceptualised by processual theory in CHM enabled the intangible concepts of archaeological `expertise' and `knowledge' to be made tangible and, ultimately, a definable target in any challenge to archaeological authority.

A further irony of the situation is that what the claims of archaeological scientists for possession of items of material culture really highlight is that these claims are as much cultural--that is, creating cultures through linking identity to objects and what they represent--as they are for Indigenous people. While the TALC repossession of the disputed artefacts may mark both an actual and symbolic challenge to archaeological identity, it offers a positive opportunity for archaeologists. With this challenge, the old processual claims to authority have been shown to have failed in maintaining access to the data base. No longer can appeals to `scientific rights' be seen as necessarily useful in any conflict. The `need' to maintain processual discourse and concepts to maintain authority has been both exposed and shown to be no longer relevant in conflicts over access. Archaeologists may themselves wish to contest the `governance' of the discipline's values, concepts and identity. The opportunity presents itself to re-examine and redefine the aims and conceptual underpinnings of archaeological research and management.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Gary Campbell commented on drafts of this article. A draft was presented at the Objects of Belonging Conference, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, 1997.

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Laurajane Smith Aboriginal Research and Resource Centre, University of New South Wales
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